Well, Villa’s budding stars will further their development in the NextGen Series quarter-final against Marseille at Villa Park tomorrow evening.

And the Under-19s competition itself, billed as a Junior Champions League, is hoping to kick on to a bright future after the success of its inaugural season so far.

Villa have enjoyed the tournament to date, growing into their group at such a rapid rate they topped their table with four wins and two defeats.

It has earned them home advantage in tomorrow’s last-eight tie and the claret and blues are hoping to attract a crowd of 3,000 against their French visitors.

Despite kicking off with a 2-0 defeat at Ajax and also suffering a 3-2 reverse at Rosenborg, Villa won 2-1 at Fenerbahce and boast a 100 per cent record at home.

Villa Park witnessed 11 goals in three matches with the youngsters thumping Fenerbahce 4-0, Rosenborg 4-1 and avenging the Ajax setback with a 3-0 victory over the Dutch giants.

Gary Gardner, in particular, has come of age on the European stage, captaining the teenage team to the knockout stages and showing his class against his continental contemporaries.

A hat-trick against Ajax was Gardner’s personal highlight and he has used NextGen as a springboard into the senior squad, making an impressive full first-team debut in last weekend’s win at Wolves.

“Aston Villa has always been spoken about for providing top young talent and we’ve proved that over the past,” said Gardner.

“We’ve won the reserves league several times, we’ve won the youth league and done well in the FA Youth Cup.

“When I got told about this tournament, I thought ‘I want to play in this’ so to get to the quarter-finals is a great achievement.

“Hopefully, we can go all the way and win the competition.”

In the other quarter-finals, a veritable who’s who of Europe’s biggest clubs, Barcelona host Ajax, Sporting Lisbon take on Inter Milan and, in an all English tie, Tottenham meet Liverpool.

The semi-finals, third-placed play-off and final are set to be played in the same week at the same venue in April, with Villa Park in the running to host the competition’s four-match climax.

Currently the NextGen Series is by invite only, with Villa being asked to participate because of their European tradition and the reputation of its academy.

But organisers are exploring the possibility of taking the tournament on to bigger and better things next season, possibly with live television coverage.

Tomorrow’s tie comes at a time when the need to provide promising talent with a competitive platform upon which to thrive is back on football’s agenda,

Andre Villas-Boas suggested last week that England’s current youth and reserve leagues lack intensity and the Chelsea manager called for a similar system to Spain where elite clubs have ‘B’ teams in lower divisions.

Depending on its growth, the NextGen Series is seen by many as a viable way of helping to partly fill the void with semi-regular keenly-contested ties where national pride and a coveted trophy are up for grabs.

Villa youth coach, Tony McAndrew, has already identified the competition as the “No.1 priority” for the club’s talented teenagers, over and above established domestic tournaments.

McAndrew is convinced the youngsters will reap the benefits of travelling, training and playing in foreign climes after productive trips to Amsterdam, Istanbul and Trondheim.

“It is a great innovation,” he enthused.

“Being involved in this competition can only help our young lads improve.

“Games are refereed differently, there are different styles of play and things will go on that wouldn’t go on in the English game.

“It is a massive part of their education and they have got to cope with it.”

There is often an ‘inferiority complex’ about the quality of homegrown youngsters compared to their more exotic-sounding foreign counterparts.

But this tournament has allowed Villa to gauge the level of their own academy players, as well as keep tabs on emerging stars from overseas.

Villa boss Alex McLeish said: “I love it – it is brilliant.

“It is like a mini-Champions League for the kids, and it’s great to see the involvement of all the top teams in Europe.

“I think it has been very refreshing. British players sometimes get inferiority complexes when they do play the European teams and games like this can let them see ‘Wait a minute, we’re as good.’

“There is no doubt every detail of all of the clubs that we play or that we hear about, along with certain players, will be logged.

“I would like to see it continue – for me it has been worthwhile, but it is very dependent on funding.”

More than 2,000 tickets have already been snapped up for tomorrow’s tie against Marseille and chief executive Paul Faulkner is predicting Villa will more than triple the 800 attendance enthralled by the November triumph over Ajax.

“We’ve had three fantastically exciting wins at Villa Park in the tournament so far, and we’re hoping that the game tomorrow provides more of the same,” said Faulkner.

“We want as many fans as possible at the stadium to cheer the team on against a really tough opponent.

“It’s also a great opportunity for supporters to see the talent that we have coming through our youth system, and players who will be hoping to make the transition to the first team in future seasons, like so many have done before.”

? Season ticket holders can claim a free ticket for tomorrow night’s match, while entry for non-season ticket holders is £3 for adults and £1 for Under-16s.